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Problems with Microsoft Adventure booter

Q

QuantumII

Veteran Member
Joined
Aug 12, 2008
Messages
503
Location
Oslo,Norway
Hi

I've just created a booter-disk from an image file with Microsoft Adventure. I made it on my XT.

Problem is; It boots fine on my Pentium 4 box, but the XT does not boot the disk, it just throws me into ROM basic.

Any clue on what can cause this ? I used a genuine 360kb floppy for this, and the imaging software was dskimage.com from mbbrutman.
 
QuantumII said:
Hi

I've just created a booter-disk from an image file with Microsoft Adventure. I made it on my XT.

Problem is; It boots fine on my Pentium 4 box, but the XT does not boot the disk, it just throws me into ROM basic.

Any clue on what can cause this ? I used a genuine 360kb floppy for this, and the imaging software was dskimage.com from mbbrutman.
Click to expand...

I'm not exactly sure, but MS Adventure was on a 160k single-sided floppy. Did you format the disk to 160k before copying the image to it?
 
Bah, It didn't work. Still boots fine on the Pentium 4 box, still no go on the XT.. Puzzles me quite a bit...
 
If the XT doesn't like the floppy (because it is not readable) it will punt and go to BASIC. Reasons for not liking the floppy include:

  • The head is slightly misaligned compared to the machine that wrote the diskette
  • You used a high density diskette
  • Other creative errors?

I thought Adventure was copy protected. What did you use to make the diskette?


Mike
 
floppy

floppy

QuantumII said...Still boots fine on the Pentium 4 box, still no go on the XT
Click to expand...

Can you copy the .img to the XT and perform the re-imaging on the XT ?
Just out of curiosity, if you open the image file with a hex editor, do you see "Demonlord" or something like that in there ?
What are you using to re-image, anyway ?

patscc
 
Did you write the disk in the Pentium? If so, try writing it in the XT.
 
QuantumII said:
Hi

I've just created a booter-disk from an image file with Microsoft Adventure. I made it on my XT.

Problem is; It boots fine on my Pentium 4 box, but the XT does not boot the disk, it just throws me into ROM basic.

Any clue on what can cause this ? I used a genuine 360kb floppy for this, and the imaging software was dskimage.com from mbbrutman.
Click to expand...

I created it on the XT. The IMG file and the disk imager was copied to the XT via serial transfer first, then I created the floppy.

The floppy is a 360k one (DS,DD) N.O.S from eBay.

I think this version of adventure is cracked or something. a DIR in dos on the floppy reveals:

Demonl ord
Done.

Diskcopy
Does
Da
Deed..
 
QuantumII said:
I created it on the XT. The IMG file and the disk imager was copied to the XT via serial transfer first, then I created the floppy.

The floppy is a 360k one (DS,DD) N.O.S from eBay.

I think this version of adventure is cracked or something. a DIR in dos on the floppy reveals:

Demonl ord
Done.

Diskcopy
Does
Da
Deed..
Click to expand...

There is also a hidden message after that, but you need to look at the file in an HEX editor if you want to read it.

Lots of the images at Retrogade are cracked, as of they where originally write-protected, and sadly, Demonlord has written his signature on many of them.
 
I'm at a loss to explain why a Pentium 4 will boot the disk, but an XT won't. The only thing I could think of is that the boot sector is missing some information the XT needs. I'd be willing to bet that Pentium 4 BIOSes no longer look for stuff like the number of disk sides, so they wouldn't care if that's missing.
 
boot

boot

I unassembled a bit of the image file in debug, and pretty early on, the code issues an INT 19h, or a soft boot, in other words.

What kind of hardware do you have in your XT ?

patscc
 
QuantumII said:
I just tried this now. The floppy is written fine, and the DIR command shows the same. The XT still fails to boot it..

per: Can you try it on your XT and see if it works ?
Click to expand...

I'll see. but I'm only home in the weekends, so you have to wait a litte. School just started.
 
patscc said:
I unassembled a bit of the image file in debug, and pretty early on, the code issues an INT 19h, or a soft boot, in other words.

What kind of hardware do you have in your XT ?

patscc
Click to expand...

There's 2 HH 360k floppy drives connected to the IBM floppy controller, a ST11-M mfm controller with a St-225 20mb drive, a VGA card & a I/O card with 2x serial and 1x paralell.
 
patscc said:
Do you have something other than a VGA card you can put in there ?
patscc
Click to expand...

Yes, I have both an EGA card and a CGA card. I even have a luggable with an MDA clone card. However, I don't have any monitors to connect to them..

The EGA(?) has composite out though..
 
per said:
There is also a hidden message after that, but you need to look at the file in an HEX editor if you want to read it.

Lots of the images at Retrogade are cracked, as of they where originally write-protected, and sadly, Demonlord has written his signature on many of them.
Click to expand...


Sorry to drag this slightly off topic.

I've known demonlord as a good friend for over a decade.
He's extremely passionate about booter games and he's careful about making sure that the stuff he cracks and releases work properly. Because modifications have to be made to crack the game anyway, adding an invisible message like that, while grandstanding a bit, shouldn't have any impact on gameplay.

there are copies of the original, uncracked versions of many of these booter images out there, but since they are protected, they cannot be distributed as .img files. You may need something like an option board to really restore the disk to its initial state.



This is an interesting problem, I can give it a try on my machines too.
 
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